Video Transcript

Hey, this is Leo for Actualized.org and in this video I want to talk about philosophy. In particular I want to talk about practical philosophy. How do we take philosophy back from the goddamn academics that stole it from us?

Redefining Philosophy

Okay, let’s talk about philosophy. This is a really fascinating topic. I want to cover what philosophy is and I want to give a new definition for philosophy. I want to redefine philosophy. Really it’s not a new definition, it’s an old definition.

This is really powerful. If you’re thinking, “Philosophy, what has this to do with my life? How is it going to change my life? How’s this really going to have any practical significance?”, then this video is actually for you.

I’m going to be touching on that subject and why your current thinking could be holding you back. Stick with me, there will be practical applications, but also some nice philosophical applications and I think you’re going to have a blast. I’m going to take you through a tour of philosophy.

All right, let’s crack into that. I am a philosophy major, I was, rather, a philosophy major in university. Initially I went for Aerospace Engineering but then after two years I didn’t really like it, it was too dry for me so I became a philosophy major and I graduated with that. I had a blast doing philosophy, I like doing philosophy, but the philosophy that they teach you in universities is really a travesty. It is a bastardization of what philosophy really is.

The native stigma that we have today both in popular culture and even deeper than popular culture, there’s just a stigma about philosophy being something for white, crusty old men who sit around and do a mental circle-jerk. That that’s what philosophers do and that’s what philosophy is. That really the best thing to do is to leave it all alone and go off and run your own life doing whatever it is that you do without worrying too much about philosophy.

I totally resonate with that. I understand what you’re saying, even though I’m a very nerdy, intellectual, academically inclined guy and I had no problem diving into the academics of philosophy. Except, and I didn’t realize this at the time when I was in it because I didn’t know enough about life, I didn’t know enough about psychology, is that I didn’t realize what was happening. What is currently happening in universities and colleges all across the country and the world, where they are taking philosophy and they are turning it into something that is not really philosophy.

The Back Story

What it is, is it’s academic minutia, scholars and professors trying to one-up each other with stupid research papers, arguing about technical trivialities that have absolutely no application to life, not to mention our lives, but also their own personal lives. That’s the current state of philosophy really is. Let’s talk about what philosophy really is. Let’s do a little history lesson in philosophy.

First of all let’s talk about the word ‘philosophy’. What does it actually mean literally. ‘Philo-‘ means love and ‘-osophy’ just like biology or any kind of ‘-ology’ ending, you know what that means? That means ‘the study of’. So ‘love of study’ or more accurately, ‘love of wisdom’, ‘love of knowledge.

That’s literally what philosophy meant back in the old days. By old days what I’m talking about is two and a half thousand years ago in the era of Plato and Aristotle. That’s if we’re talking about western philosophy. That’s what it meant. Love of wisdom. Love of knowledge.

Now you might be saying, “Okay, that makes sense”, but you’ve got to understand what knowledge meant back then versus what it means now. Now when we say ‘knowledge’ what do we mean? We usually mean book smarts, book learning.

How much do you know about X topic? How much do you know about biology? How much do you know about math? How much do you know certain trivia? How much do you know about the war of 1812? That sort of stuff.

There’s nothing wrong with knowing those things, and I encourage you to study everything. I’m a voracious reader, voracious studier, I study everything. I think it’s critical to your success in life. I also think that it’s a focus on the wrong thing.

In the old times what wisdom and knowledge meant was not knowledge of specific things or specific subjects. It was knowledge of life, knowledge of psychology. See, two thousand years ago, there really was no subject of psychology. Psychology is something new. It’s a new development.

Psychology rose with William James and that was in the late eighteen hundreds and then it really got going with Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung in the early nineteen hundreds, then started to take off we would say in the nineteen thirties and the nineteen fifties. Now it’s just blooming. Now psychology has even evolved into positive psychology, which is actually what philosophy was two and a half thousand years ago. It was positive psychology.

Positive psychology, as a branch, didn’t even exist forty years ago. It’s ridiculous! Only forty years ago did we finally catch up and did we finally systematize this study. The values of the study of what it means to create a happy fulfilled life. What it means to be a human being. This is what philosophers are really interested in.

You might be saying, “Well what about all this airy, fairy conversation that philosophers have? The minutia? Aren’t philosophers even in the old days arguing about all sorts of crazy and stupid things? You can cite numerous examples from The Republic, from Plato’s Republic. Weren’t there silly arguments in there?”

Asking Questions and Finding Answers

Yes. By their nature philosophers, because they’re looking for sources of truth and knowledge, they’re going out there and they’re doing an inspection. They’re doing an inspection into life. They’re doing an inspection into psychology, into physics, into everything. They’re just introspecting. They’re asking themselves questions and they’re looking for answers.

Sometimes, and especially two and a half thousand years ago, we didn’t really know what we were doing. We didn’t know kind of questions to even ask, what kind of questions had answers, what kind didn’t, it was all a big mess. It’s still a big mess to some degree even today, but the focus there, the reason they were doing it, there was a reason.

It wasn’t just a debate for debate’s sake. It wasn’t just to publish a paper or to get some pat on the back that you said something smart. It was actually to embody the knowledge that you discovered and to live a powerful life.

If you look at Aristotle, if you look at Plato, if you look at Socrates especially, if we just take three of the greats from the Classical era, then you see that these were people that not only theorized and philosophized, they lived what they discovered. They lived the highest truths. This actually had an effect on their life.

True wisdom is not knowing some theory. It’s not just knowing the theory of relativity. It’s not knowing quantum mechanics or some nerdy subject. That is nothing. That is just a mockery of what knowledge is used for.

Knowledge is practical. Knowledge is what I’m teaching you guys here. Knowledge is really understanding how to live a big life. It’s understanding how hot to live a good life.

It can also be an introspection into metaphysics and the nature of reality, the nature of knowledge. So yes, it can be an introspection into all of those domains. There we start to get a little bit more iffy, a little bit more abstract, a little bit more vague. That was done in the old days. That was done still with the intention of improving your life, making your life better.

Really think about this. These philosophers, they lived their values. They lived the truths. They were a rare sort you might say.

You might think of it this way. Think of it as, there was the common folk, the folk that were really living a miserable existence like the farmers, the peasants and the slaves. Then there was let’s say the upper class. This was the nobility, the aristocracy, the senators, if we’re talking about Greece and Rome.

Philosophy And Self-actualization

They were the successful ones. They were the ones that ran businesses and had power, they were part of a powerful family, they had influence and connections and they were well educated and all this. Then there were the philosophers. The philosophers were the ones that were living up to something more noble.

Today we might say this really goes along with self-actualization and Abraham Maslow’s understanding of what self-actualization is, his description of people being humanists. To be a humanist, to be humanistic means to live up to what a human is supposed to be. The highest potential within a human.

Back in the classical times, what they called that is they called that virtue. It’s living a virtuous life. Living to virtues.

Virtues like honesty, truth, beauty, excellence, doing the right thing, duty, loyalty, friendship, love, compassion, knowledge, understanding, doing something positive for humanity, making a contribution, not doing petty things, not losing your temper, not getting angry at people, not being depressed or anxious or being too selfish or earning money at the expense of other people or laughing at the expense of other people… that’s what it means to be virtuous. That’s what it means to be self-actualized. The two are really the same thing and it’s really taken us a couple thousand years as a culture to kind of come back home to what philosophy was.

Really it’s a shame what philosophy has been made out to be now. In fact when I was in college I was so fascinated by philosophy. I started studying philosophy on my own even before I even got into college in late high school. I was just so fascinated.

I think everyone should be a philosopher. Why? Because what do you have? Philosophy is about learning how to live a good life and how to live a happy, fulfilled life. That means it applies to everyone. It’s the most practical of things.

It’s not the most airy fairy and abstract. It’s the most practical. Think about that. It’s the most practical because what do you have? You’re going to be born, you’re going to grow up and you’re going to die. That’s life. You’re going to have yourself along for the ride from the beginning to the end.

What could be more practical than just asking yourself questions like what am I doing here on this earth? What is the nature of reality? What is my psychology? What is the connection between psychology and physics? What is the connection between the thoughts that I have and the results that I get in my life?

What is the connection between the values that I live up to and the results that I get in my life and the happiness level that I’m at. What kind of values should I be pursuing? What kind of values should I not be pursuing?

That is relevant to you. That is relevant to everybody. So I started to get very interested in this back in high school and I started doing a lot of independent research, study, reading but also, most importantly, just asking myself the question’s and having the curiosity which I find missing in many people.

Going Through Life Like Robots

Many people what they do is they kind of get out of high school and then they go to college and they just study stuff, whatever is given to them and then they get into the work force. They’re just kind of humming along. They’re just like robots going through life.

They’re sleepwalking through life. They’re not really critical. They’re not critically examining life. They’re not asking themselves the questions. They’re not generating the answers.

Even in the best cases people go to books or some authority to get answers. Religion, politics, media, their friends, the Internet… you go and you try and get answers there and there’s nothing really that if you do it intelligently, critically and you use your judgment and you use wisdom. But, you’ve got no judgment, you’ve got no wisdom because you haven’t exercised philosophy so you don’t know what judgment and wisdom really are.

You’re not wise, therefore, whatever information is thrown at you, you just lap it up. I can throw you a piece of shit and you’re going to eat it. That’s why it’s important to be a philosopher so you can understand when people are feeding you shit and you can understand when they’re feeding you gold. That way you can choose and understand which people you can listen to and which people you cannot.

Then you can also develop ideas that you get from other people, you can develop them further on your own. It’s really powerful. As a philosopher what you’re becoming really is a master of thought of reasoning, understanding what wisdom is and then of course it goes even deeper into psychology. Philosophy and psychology to me are like this. They’re just like two sides of the same coin.

What I was talking about earlier, the point that I neglected to make is that when I got into college I really wanted to become a professor in Philosophy because I was so fascinated by it. I wanted to get a PhD but then when I started doing a little bit more research, digging into it, what I realized was if I was going to be a professional philosopher than I would have to do that whole academic game, jumping through hoops with all these petty papers and trying to get tenureship and going through all the bureaucracy of that is just preposterous.

What they’ve done in universities with philosophy is they’ve taken original philosophy, old school philosophy which was this beautiful, the most precious thing that you could have and the most precious activity that you can do as a human being, they took the most precious part of it, they took the heart of it, they ripped that out, they threw that to the ground. They forgot about it and now they’ve got this husk, this empty shell that they call philosophy that they teach you and that they write papers on. It’s a fucking travesty. It’s ridiculous; they should be ashamed of themselves of what they’ve done to this beautiful human endeavor.

A Practical Area of Study

Really now the tide has kind of shifted and it’s gone to philosophy. If you’re going to study anything that’s going to be practical, in college, it’s going to be psychology and more specifically positive psychology. Psychology actually went through a phase in the early nineteen hundreds where there was also a focus on the wrong things with Freud and Carl Jung and all the early old school psychologists. I mean nothing against them, they were discovering a new field so they were in a different time. We’re kind of standing on their shoulders now.

The problem there is that they were looking at dysfunctions. They were looking at all the problems there were in life and they were looking at all the problems with your psychology. Some people need that help so we don’t want to dismiss that. Some people genuinely need assistance for abnormal psychological conditions.

Most of us, that’s not what we need help with. Most of us need help with living up to the values. Most of us need help with how do we live an excellent life? How do we live up to our full potential? How do we create a big life?

How do we deal with the struggles of doing that? How do we choose those values? How do we know which values to choose? How do we build practical wisdom?

That’s what we really need help with. That’s what’s really practical. That is, thankfully, now something that has really been tackled a lot by the self-help movement in the last fifty years, but also positive psychology is tackling that from the academic side, so there’s some good news there.

Bottom line though, is philosophy. I really want to convince you that philosophy is something that you should be critically interested in. This should be a side hobby of yours for the rest of your life at the very least.

What does this really mean? What does it mean to be a philosopher? First of all, read a lot. Read a lot of books. Be interested in stuff.

I read shitloads of books, diverse topics of books. I read about science, history, political science, philosophy proper from the old school days, I read about psychology, I read about biographies… I’ll read it all. I love it all. It’s fascinating.

All of it goes with the wisdom I can generate insights from. Start doing that. Start thinking critically about your own life. Start thinking critically about society. Society’s standards.

Start thinking very critically about how you’ve been conditioned and enculturated and the effect that it’s having on you. Of course all the information I’m bringing to you through these videos definitely soak all of that up, look at it again and again and again. Think about it critically. Don’t just take all the ideas I give you at face value, think of them, contemplate them, see how they apply, see how maybe what I’m saying is not right for you. You have to do that. You have to do that critical thinking work. Don’t just sit back like a slug and just soak it up.

A Lesson From Star Wars

Here’s the real vision though, my real vision for you. I want us to take back philosophy from the fucking academics because what they’ve done to it is a crying shame. Here’s the best analogy I can give you because everyone has experienced this. Star Wars.

All right let’s talk about Star Wars. What is Star Wars? Star Wars is an illustration of what I’m talking about. What is going on in Star Wars? In Star Wars, I’m talking about the original episodes, the original three, is that you’ve got the Jedi.

Who is the Jedi in the Star Wars universe? The Jedi in the Star Wars universe is a philosopher that’s who he is. He’s the philosopher. He is that rare part of the general population, that rare individual within the whole population that is working for something larger. He is working towards the ultimate ideal.

He is living a virtuous life. Not only is he thinking about it, there’s that whole mystical Yoda side of the Jedi, but there’s also the practical side of the Jedi. He’s also going out there and fighting the battles. He’s creating the wars.

He’s choosing where to put the energy and where to make a leverage so that you can change the world for the better because he sees that there are wrongs that need to be righted. He is the light side. He’s the light, he is the virtue of the universe.

Whereas what is everybody else? What are the other characters in the Star Wars universe doing? What are they doing?

Who do you have? You have Han Solo, you’ve got Leia, you’ve got Chewbacca, you’ve got the droids, you’ve got the storm troopers, you’ve got the evil emperor and you’ve got his apprentice Darth Vader. What are all of them doing? They are living.

First of all, let’s really separate the emperor and Darth Vader from the rest. Let’s take the rest as the normal folk. Let’s say they’re kind of living a comfortable, ordinary existence in the universe. They are basically encompassing the status quo. They are living.

First of all, let’s really separate the emperor and Darth Vader from the rest. Let’s take the rest as kind of the normal folk and say they’re kind of living a comfortable, ordinary existence in the universe. They are basically encompassing the status quo. They’re just living their existence.

Sure, Han Solo will go out and fight here or there, but really he’s a selfish bastard, he’s out for himself. He wants sex and he wants this, he’s kind of living for the lower values, money and sex and whatever else. Sometimes he’ll go and he’ll kind of fight a little bit here or there to save his life or the life of his friends.

Leia, what is she doing? She’s got a cause of her own, but she’s kind of living in the ordinary world. So is everybody else.

Now you’ve got the Emperor and you’ve got Darth Vader. They’re the evil ones. They are the dark side. They’re actually, you could say that they are living consciously, but they are the dark, the evil side of consciousness.

How do we now map this onto our own existence, our own reality? The philosopher is the Jedi. They’re the Jedi, they’re looking for the high values, the virtues. That’s what they’re trying to live up to.

Are You A Jedi or A Jabba The Hutt?

The rest of the masses, those are the people that are living unconsciously. It’s an unconscious kind of life. You know what that really is? That is the Jabba the Hutt. He is the prime example of this.

Who do you want to be? Do you want to be a Jedi, or do you want to be the Jabba of the fucking Hutt. What is Jabba the Hutt? He is the epitome of base values. He is the epitome of living a comfortable, relaxed kind of life.

It’s a life that you live for yourself. It’s a life that you live that is easy and chill and you’re not honoring any kind of high values. He’s not after beauty, he’s not after excellence, he’s not after saving the world or helping anybody, he’s not after anything, he’s not even after to really improve his own life.

Look at him. He’s a fat slug who’s just eating frogs and shit and then trying to trap Jedis in his little dungeon and feed them to a rancor. That’s what he’s trying to do.

Literally you can find Jabba the Hutt characters in life. I’m sure you can point some out right now. Maybe your boss or somebody. It’s the Jabba the Hutt character. They’re not honoring higher values.

Really look at this, who are you in the movie of your life? I hope you can say that you are not the Jabba the Hutt character. I hope so, but you know what, I think you are. You are the Jabba the Hutt character.

What are you doing with your life? Are you a Jedi? If you’re not a Jedi, that only leaves two options. You’re either the Jabba the Hutt character or you’re some sort of evil sith lord Darth Vader or the Emperor. Really there are few of those in life so most of us, and in fact most of the evil of life, is not some sort of super evil. Most of the evil in life is actually unconsciousness and it’s just complacency. It’s just being that Jabba the Hutt.

Jabba the Hutt was a horrible character. He tried he tried to kill a Jedi who was trying to do something good. He tried to kill Han Solo. He was really unfair, he was lecherous and disgusting and just a fat slob. Not somebody that you want to emulate.

Live Your Life Consciously

Do you want to live your life that way? Is that what your life is about being Jabba the Hutt? The most Jabba the Hutt that you can? It’s like, yeah, I want to be the most Jabba the Hutt that I can be. I don’t even know if that makes sense.

If you want to be a Jabba the Hutt it’s almost like you’re kind of moving to some sort of value. Jabba the Hutts don’t think like that. They just live unconsciously. They don’t recognize what they’re doing.

But the Jedi, think about what the Jedi is in this universe. He is the conscious one. He is the one that knows. He’s got wisdom. Wisdom that the rest of the masses cannot even understand.

He’s got the force on his side. What is the force? What is the equivalent of force?

If you think that this is just a vague metaphor that I’m making, it is not. This is very literal. There’s a very literal mapping between Star Wars and your life. Very real here so pay attention. Don’t dismiss this.

The force is your understanding and control of yourself. What is that? That is your own mastery of your psychology. That is you having wisdom, you being able to control your emotions, you really understanding yourself and being in touch with who you are authentically.

You having a cause and a purpose that all of your actions are moving towards and that cause and purpose is outside yourself. It’s something big, something powerful, something based in consciousness not unconsciousness. That’s the force.

How strong is your attunement with the force right now? Do you really know your psychology? Do you know how you work? I don’t mean just ‘know’ in knowing theoretically, I mean ‘know’ practically. You practically control yourself.

Do you have discipline problems? Do you have procrastination problems? Do you have anger problems? Do you have negative thinking problems?

If you do then you do not really understand your psychology and you are no Jedi, or at the very least you are a struggling Jedi very early on in his training. It’s like a Jedi who’s trying to pick up a rock with the force and he can’t do it. That’s basically you.

The Jedi Master

Somebody who has very good self-mastery, somebody who understands their psychology and can control their psychology, has discipline, has will power, has emotional intelligence, has wisdom, is pursuing the right values in life, is studying life, is a student of life, appreciates that and is working towards something high conscious. What is that person doing? That person is being Jedi.

He is like the master Jedi. He is Obi-Wan Kenobi. He has full mastery of the force. He knows the force. The force flows through him.

He is a vehicle of the force and he uses it for good in the world. He is powerful. He’s got power. He’s got power that others envy. He’s got power that he can impart on other people but only those that are willing to listen.

In the Star Wars universe not every shmuck can be a Jedi. You don’t just get people running up to Ben Kenobi asking to be a Jedi. Why is that? That’s because the Jedi training process is challenging and it takes a certain initial drive to even want you to start to pursue that path.

Luke Skywalker had it. That’s why we related with him. He had something in him. He had that little spark that was enough to get him on the path because all that it takes is to see the value of it.

As long as you can see the value of the path, you will get on the path even if right now you have no idea what you’re doing. Even if you’re lost. The fact that you can recognize the value is enough. Most people cannot even recognize the value. Those are the people that dismiss psychology as airy fairy.

Those are the same people who will post comments on my YouTube videos and say, “Yeah, all you’re saying is good, but it’s idealistic. It’s not going to work for my life. This piece of advice is not going to work for me. That’s fairytale land. Fairytale, abstract philosophy, psychology, all theory, where are the results? Give me the results.”

I am giving you the results. A fucking Jedi gets phenomenal results, but he doesn’t go on the path for results. He doesn’t ask himself every five minutes, “Where are the results?” He’s smarter than that. He is wise.

He’s a long term thinker. He knows that he has to really understand the force. Psychology. Understand it, play with it, master it then he can go out there and do battle and he’d be phenomenal. He can be so phenomenal he’ll send chills up your spine.

If you think that this is just some sort of super hero fantasy, you’re dead wrong because I’m very literal here. You can literally have the power of a Jedi in your life if you commit yourself to the path, the path that I’m talking about here. This is not theory, although it sounds like it. This is not abstraction, although it is.

There Is True Power In Self-mastery

This is true power. When you can master yourself, there is very little in this world that can stop you. That’s hard to explain to people. It’s hard to really get this across to someone who does not have that initial spark for wisdom. Who cannot even see the value of the wisdom. It’s hard to get across the value of wisdom to someone who doesn’t understand that wisdom has really deep value.

It’s kind of like taking Jabba the Hutt and saying, “You know what Jabba the Hutt, I see that you’ve got this nice palace here and you’ve got this thing going on with your snail barge off in the desert, you can move around and you’re sitting on your couch it seems so comfy. You get to have nice entertainment by throwing people down into your pit with the rancors and you get to eat those yummy frogs. That’s all great. How about we take away all that, put you on a grueling path of self-mastery, put you on a fucking stair master goddamn fat slug and then some years down the line you will be able to wield a light saber and control the forces of nature with your mind. How about that, Jabba the Hutt?”

What do you think he’s going to say? What do you think Jabba the Hutt is going to say? “Yeah let’s do it! Fuck this whole thing I’ve got going here. I don’t need Jabba’s palace. Jabba’s palace, that’s shit. Let’s go apprentice with Yoda. Let’s go apprentice with Yoda and listen to Yoda’s mysterious bullshit backwards grammar talk and try to figure all this stuff out, try to master myself, get on that stair master and then maybe five years from now I’ll be able to go do something good for the world.”

He is the Darth Vader as well. It’s like Darth Vader. He’s too far gone to be brought back to the light side. He’s too far gone.

He’s too comfortable. He’s too comfortable. It’s very hard for someone like Obi-Wan Kenobi to come in there and to show him the light side. He’s not going to see it.

He’s just literally not going to see it. He’s not going to believe it. It’s going to be outside of his reality completely.

That’s what I see when I’m trying to share some of this wisdom with you guys. Literally I’m sharing with you hundreds of thousands of dollars of the best wisdom from the last two and a half thousand years. I’m talking about the best seminars that I’ve been to and I’ve seen. The best books that I’ve read and I’ve read hundreds of them. The best compilations of notes that I’ve looked and studied.

Everything that I’ve experienced with my clients and with myself, all of the work that I’ve done. I’ve taken all of that, distilled all the nuggets of it and it’s here for you. The real question is, are you going to see the value of it?

Are you even going to register it or are you going to be a fat, lazy Jabba the Hutt and sit there and poke fun, criticize, laugh, dismiss, come up with excuses, be a victim of your own circumstances, be cynical, say that it cannot be done, that this thing that is being shown to you is not true? It is true, you just don’t see the light. In fact, it is equally powerful.

Recognizing The Force In Your Life

The information that I am telling you, this wisdom, philosophy, psychology, is equally powerful to the effect of force in the Star Wars universe. It’s equally powerful here. You will be shocked when you actually do some of this work at the parallels. It will be freaky to you.

You will literally have that moment, and this is another analogy I like to use, of Neo in the Matrix, seeing the Matrix for the first time, seeing that and then also then starting to bend the rules of the Matrix. That’s literally what you’re going to discover when you get really deep down this rabbit hole. It’s an extraordinary experience. It’s very profound.

It’s deeply fulfilling. It’s so fulfilling it brings you to tears when you realize some of this stuff. It’s that powerful. If you think it’s just kind of airy fairy, there is the fulfillment part which is kind of airy fairy, but there’s also the performance that you get.

Don’t forget who a Jedi is. A Jedi isn’t someone who just sits in a cave. He is not a hermit. He is active in the world. Sometimes he’s a hermit, sometimes he’s reclusive, but then he can always pick up a sword, he can always use his force powers. He can actually go out into the world, onto the battle field and fight the good fight and he prevails. The way he prevails, oh my god! He’s got the power of the universe behind him literally.

This is literally what you will have because let me tell you, what you think is the universe is actually your psychology, and everything that you think is limiting you, everything that you think is outside of you that is holding you back, that is your psychology holding you back my friend. So when you understand the rules of psychology and you master them, can you imagine what you can do? What you can do with your life? What you can accomplish?

You cannot even imagine that right now. Your imagination is literally, because it is part of your psychology and your mind, it has literally been so disused, it’s in such disrepair, it’s been so conditioned by the negative force of society and all your past experience that you cannot even see what is possible for you. In fact, I understand your own psychology better than you do right now and I can actually see your potential more clearly than you can because I see through the fog.

I can see through the fog because I’ve walked the path, not completely, but I’ve walked it much further than you have, therefore I can look back and I can see how what you’re saying to me it’s almost laughable sometimes when I read some of the comments or I get some of the emails, people complaining about some of their problems in life. Sometimes it’s laughable to me because I look it and say, “Oh my god! That person is dealing with that? That’s preposterous! That problem is all in his mind yet he thinks it’s out there.”

It’s the same way the people in the Matrix, they think that they can’t fly and they can’t jump and that everything is real and everything is out to get them, but they don’t realize that it’s an illusion. The people that are in the Matrix and they do see it like Neo and Morpheus and others, they can bend the rules. That’s literally what I’m doing with my life is I’m bending the rules. Not physically, I’m bending them psychologically.

You don’t appreciate right now how many of the rules are in your head versus out in the world. It’s crazy when you actually feel that. It takes some time to get there. You won’t get there immediately. This video probably won’t do it for you either, this will probably get you on the track.

I want to get you on the track. I want you to open your mind and to tune in. I want you to tune in with that filter that you’ve got somewhere. Maybe it’s covered in dust and grime and spider webs. That filter that you’ve got that searches for wisdom and truth and latches onto it.

What I want you to do is I want you to use that filter to pick out what I’m saying to you and then say, “Yes, this is where I get on the path. This is something that is powerful. I can feel it somewhere in there. I can feel it somewhere even though I have my doubts, my worries, my concerns, my victim mindset, just something about this feels right.”

I want you to get on the path and see where it takes you. Just see where it takes you. I can take you somewhere very cool. Somewhere very powerful. Somewhere extremely profound.

I want to show you the light side. I want to show you the path of the Jedi. I want to make you the Jedi of your life.

Wrap Up

Okay, this is Leo, I’m going to be signing off. Those are my thoughts on philosophy and Star Wars and your connection to all of that. So, how about you leave me some comments on this? All you Star Wars fans out there post away, but don’t make it a debate about Star Wars or Star Trek.

Then, of course, please like this and share it so that other people get to see the goodness and hear the goodness and also can get on the light side. We want more people on the light side. Here the Jedis are recruiting.

Of course, if you’re really serious and you saw something here that resonated with you, go to Actualized.org right here, check out the site and subscribe to the newsletter. You’re going to get some nice bonuses for free for subscribing, some really awesome bonuses, but I think you already understand why you need to subscribe. It’s not even for the weekly updates that are free, or even for the video articles like this with tips, tricks, techniques for how to improve your life, understand yourself better. It’s because you what to be on this path and to be on this path for real you have to become a student of it.

You don’t watch one video, you don’t even watch ten videos. This is something that you live and something that you breathe and something that you do alongside everything else that you are doing. So really, become a hobbyist. Not just me, I mean there are many people out there that are sharing amazing information with you guys, you’re just not applying it. You’re not really valuing it as much as you could be.

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What I am seeing here, is that the things you are telling about philosophy, is doing injustice to what philosophy really is.
What you are doing is you are making a connection between philosophy and positive psychology, and you are suggesting that they were one and the same 2000 years ago, and this is only a quarter of the truth, not even half.

Do you know who is the father of biology/ the science of the living? Who wrote about logics/ the science of reasoning? It was Aristotle. Do biology or logic have anything to do with virtue or personal development? You are a fool if you think so.
So, in the classical ages, was Aristotle doing nothing else but personal development work? No he wasn’t, so you are wrong when you say that philosophy back in the classical age was only about personal development. It was something more than that, not just compassion and love and honesty. They were trying to find answers about the key questions of life.
Philosophy is a tree, and the concept of virtue, compassion etc etc you just told are only its branch, not the tree itself. Here, you are limiting this ocean of philosophy into a glass of water.
It is fine as long as you launch your self-help videos which are helping millions of people including me to improve their lives, but you are in no position to redefine philosophy. Do you know why? First let me tell you, personal development is a great thing, but philosophy is something more. It is the mother of scientific thinking of the modern age, it is the ancestor of science and a vehicle to improve our society. It has been refined and modified through the ages, and its impact is unimaginable, and isn’t at all limited only to personal development.
Its like you are saying that pacific ocean is a pond. Its not a pond. Likewise , philosophy is not simply personal development , NOT EVEN IN THE CLASSICAL AGES.

Just watch yourself, you are ” foolishly “trying to redefine philosophy ( which is initself something revolutionary, but in this case, its utter stupidity. If you were really redefining it, then you would be like me, forever preserved in the history books) as a small garden, which in fact is a huge evergreen and ever growing forest.

Yes! There is a lot more to philosophy than just personal development. They are not identical. I never said that philosophy should turn into personal development.

Aristotle was both scientist and philosopher. There was little distinction in those days. But he was very much concerned with higher virtues and how to live the good life, not just wax philosophical about it, or bicker about minutia.

The point of this video was to say that modern philosophy has lost touch with its roots. Finding truth is a noble pursuit, but not petty truths. Philosophy was always about finding the grand truths, the grandest being: how do I live a good life?

Having esoteric, scholarly philosophical debates is such a huge waste of time. It’s like wasting your whole life crawling on your knees, looking at blades of grass through a magnifying glass, never once looking up at the stars!

If only Leo’s Coaching could be taught in schools!! This afternoon I have sat here just after New Years Day celebrations watching a few of Leo’s Coaching Video’s (first time viewer). I have found them to be hugely beneficial already in that I can see area’s of opportunity in my life and have some tools to use to implement and effect change. I particularly liked the section on being more ‘open’ when the jealousy takes over (I lost a relationship due to in our lives by looking in and not looking out. We do create the world we live in and we choose our own path. I truly believe the trick (not a Jedi mind trick) is to be ‘present’ and consciously decide how that life looks and not let the mind run on auto pilot – this is why so many people have such trivial issues that all stems from mindset. It was interesting reading John Stuart Mills comments above and I respect his passion for old school philosophy and his delicate description of philosophy being the ‘tree’ (or the ‘forest’ are they one and the same?). However, I would suggest that Leo is really onto something here – the search for answers of life, the universe and ‘what is, what was, what can be’ can only ever be done by looking within. There is nothing to fear here John. I appreciate the significant correlation between positive psychology & philosophy and I would loathe living in a world which doesn’t value higher belief systems & virtues; I get concerned imagining that there is anything more important than this, as we have all blindly missed it. I won’t walk the fear path, however, I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes by a great great philosopher from the 1970’s ‘Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.’ – Yoda. May the force be with you always.

Very insightful, I am on my path to becoming a Jedi. i take alot of interest in various topics and I intend to collect a large amount of information and create my own personalized philosophy and continual edit it along the way

I think the only thing I lack is patience, i cant wait to become a jedi..I think my only problem is that there are to many jabba the hutts around me which causes me to try and blend in with them.

id just like to reiterate Ediths comments and add that you yourself can end up a buddhist monk or you can share your insights and remain a jedi for life as monks dont engage in life on a jedi front.i hope this makes sense as i believe in your spirituality piece in sio far as that the end result for you would be to lock your physical body away as do monks and travel truely happy to the end of your mortal life. what im saying is that true enlightenment as a literal suggestion is your chosen path. this is a response to evoke a crucial likeness to what i once was on track to being as much as i could with all of my mortal powers in a suburban sydney household struggling with its demands and the demands of survival and societal demands and norms. . in other words i get you completely and am rediscovering my inner jedi.

I Noticed again you talking about the matrix like in the other videos you do I’ve been doing the guided meditations and all but I half want to live the more natural sorta life Such as living like a monk (or at least what I consider natural)

Great video! I’d like to ask something.
What about the “dark side”? Why people who have deep understanding about the “force” are evil? The ideia of the “Devil” just doesn’t make sense to me.
Why would someone with a lot of knowledge and wisdom be bad?

through out the time of watching your content, see a substantial change in, is my prespective. which seems to have already been leaning towards self actualization, but it had no catalyst to gain much consciousness until last fall. I see the fabric of the matrix, what it’s made of. how it can be minipilated for ones’ advantage, then to many. You opened the door to the force for me; allowed me to actually notice, and study my fults. the force is strong with you, bro.
I honestly couldn’t Thank you enough for your contibution.

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